BlackBerry wages war against its greatest enemy: Media haters

BlackBerry under new CEO John Chen has become a lot more pugnacious than under previous bosses — the company in just the last year has declared war on smartphone leakers, T-Mobile CEO John Legere and keyboard copycat Ryan Seacrest. And now Chen’s posse has added a new foe to its ever-growing enemies list: Reporters and bloggers who write negative things about BlackBerry.

BlackBerry on Thursday unveiled the “BlackBerry Fact Check Portal,” a new campaign that will fight back against “sensationalized reports surrounding our viability and misperceptions about our product portfolio.” We first noticed this campaign after BlackBerry promoted it on its Twitter feed with a message letting us know that “the gloves are on,” which seems like a mangled version of the idiom “the gloves are off” that people often use to indicate that they’re through messing around with their rivals.

At any rate, BlackBerry is vowing not just to take on sensationalizing reporters but also its competitors who use the media to spread falsehoods about the company.

“Today we are launching the BlackBerry Fact Check Portal, a place for us to hold our competitors accountable for what they say, when what they say is wrong,” the company writes. “We’ll provide evidence that BlackBerry continues to be a leader in mobile, and we’ll expose ‘smoke and mirrors’ marketing tactics by competitors… From mobility management to messaging, devices to security, we will make sure that you get the real story.”